These last few weeks since the start of the year (January 2019), we have been processing lots of Oak Timber planks and producing finished pieces to build the Guttering System for the roof.

The Track Saw

We took 85 planks off our Oak Storage rack, these being a nominal 27mm thick by 2000mm long and selecting them to have a width from 110mm to 160mm wide. We needed to plane down all 85 planks to end up with 100mm wide and 19mm thick. It was the case of using our new circular track saw to slice a straight edge and then using this new edge, slice the excess width off to produce a consistent 105mm width planks with the bench saw.

Starting-gutter-making-by-straightening-one-edge

The Planer

Then our planer, with its two extension tables, took over the job to clean and flatten one flat side before all pieces going through the thickener mode of the planer to clean the other side and generate 21mm thick pieces. We stopped at 21mm thick, as the finish surface was very good so no need to keep going to the target 19mm. The final step was to clean the two edges and passing it through the thickener process to make a set of clean pieces, all 100mm wide.

Gutter-Planks-ready-for-shaping-

The Router

The 85 clean pieces were then split into two piles, the Base board (of the gutters) and the vertical uprights. We needed more consistent and longer ones for the base boards (a total of 43 full length 2metre pieces). The remaining, made up of 34 full length pieces and a collection of random lengths where we had to cut some planks up because they had more twist and warp down the length (to minimise wastage during the planing process).
The first job with the router was to cut tongue and groove joints in both the base boards and the upright pieces. These are made up of four small “fingers”, located on the edge of the base board and on the lower side of the upright pieces so they come together and lock into a right-angle combined object. Then the upright pieces had a 45degree slope trimmed on the bottom edge so it provides a neat corner to the gutters. The final step was to trim a 10mm strip off the back of the base boards to provide a 19mm thick “tongue” that will slot into the Fascia boards.

The Cap and Covering Strips

Using the left over pieces from the earlier slicing of the wider planks, and more from our old left-over pile of strips in storage, we then produced lots of thin strips of Oak pieces, one size for capping the Upright sections of the guttering (designed to clamp and hold down the rubber liner and wire mesh), measuring 30mm wide by 10mm thick with all edges trimmed with a small 45degree angles. The second set of strips is for covering up the vertical and horizontal joints in the gutters, to disguise them. These Covers are a little bigger, measuring 35mm wide by 12mm thick, but only the front facing edges having been trimmed with the 45degree angles.

Pile-of-gutter-parts

Gutter-part-shapes

How-all-the-gutter-parts-go-together

We have finished producing this set of Oak timber pieces for the guttering around the roof but only with the experience of installing the gutters will show us if we have generated enough wood to complete the whole circuit. It is not difficult to make some more, we do have some spare oak planks in storage.